Contracts between landowners and sharecroppers were
typically harsh and restrictive
. Many contracts forbade sharecroppers from saving cotton seeds from their harvest, forcing them to increase their debt by obtaining seeds from the landowner. Landowners also charged extremely high interest rates.
Sharecropping was bad
because it increased the amount of debt that poor people owed the plantation owners
. Sharecropping was similar to slavery because after a while, the sharecroppers owed so much money to the plantation owners they had to give them all of the money they made from cotton.
The
requirement of little or no up-front cash for land purchase
provided the major advantage for farmers in the sharecropping arrangement. The lack of the initial up-front payment, however, also created disadvantages for the landowner who waited for payment until crops were harvested and then sold.
The sharecropping system allowed people without land to farm by dividing their cash crop profits with the landowner. The drawback was that
it was difficult for a poor farm family to stay out of debt while sharecropping
.
In addition, while sharecropping gave
African Americans autonomy in their daily work and social lives
, and freed them from the gang-labor system that had dominated during the slavery era, it often resulted in sharecroppers owing more to the landowner (for the use of tools and other supplies, for example) than they were …
Sharecropping is an arrangement in which property owners allow tenants to farm a piece of land in exchange for a share of the crop. … It was a way landowners could still command labor, often by African Americans, to keep their farms profitable. It had faded in most places by the 1940s. But
not everywhere
.
Sharecropping kept
blacks in poverty
and in a position in which they pretty much had to do what they were told by the owner of the land they were working. This was not very good for the freed slaves in that it did not give them a chance to truly escape the way things had been during slavery.
The Great Depression, mechanization, and other factors lead sharecropping to fade away in
the 1940s
.
The crop-lien system was
a way for farmers, mostly black, to get credit before the planting season by borrowing against the value of anticipated harvests
. … Additionally, sharecroppers had no mules or tools, but tenant farmers had them and commanded a larger share of the crop. The owner took the rest.
Sharecropping developed, then, as a system that theoretically
benefited both parties
. Landowners could have access to the large labor force necessary to grow cotton, but they did not need to pay these laborers money, a major benefit in a post-war Georgia that was cash poor but land rich.
What effect did the system of sharecropping have on the South after the Civil War?
It kept formerly enslaved persons economically dependent. It brought investment capital to the South. It encouraged Northerners to migrate south.
What was one long-term consequence of the sharecropping system?
Agricultural workers organized labor unions. Many former slaves became trapped in a cycle of debt
. Landowners sold property to pay wages to former slaves.
Was reconstruction a success or failure?
Explain. Reconstruction was
a success in
that it restored the United States as a unified nation: by 1877, all of the former Confederate states had drafted new constitutions, acknowledged the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, and pledged their loyalty to the U.S. government.
Do tenant farmers still exist?
A tenant farmer is
one who resides on land owned by a landlord
. … In most developed countries today, at least some restrictions are placed on the rights of landlords to evict tenants under normal circumstances.
It was widely used in the Southern United States during the Reconstruction era (1865–1877) that followed the American Civil War, which was economically devastating to the southern states. It is
still used in many rural poor areas
of the world today, notably in Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh.
